ICGA/Rybka controversy: Feedback

2/17/2012 – The recent interview with David Levy, President of the International Computer Games Association, has generated a lot of feedback from our readers – and continues to do so. We will publish a selection of this feedback next week. For now we bring you three messages from directly involved parties, including Levy himself, who has initiated an investigation against a second program.

Allegations
against another Chess Engine – The LOOP Program

By David Levy, London

The International Computer Games Association (ICGA) has received a formal
complaint from Fabien Letouzey, the programmer of FRUIT, regarding the program
LOOP. The allegation is that LOOP, which has participated in the World Computer
Chess Championship, uses code derived from FRUIT, which placed second at the
2005 World Computer Chess Championship in Reykjavik.

LOOP was developed by Dr Fritz Reul. The ICGA has attempted to contact Dr Reul
in order to give him the opportunity of commenting on the allegation prior to
the ICGA conducting a technical investigation into LOOP, but it appears to us
that Dr Reul does not wish to be found. The email address that had been used
by Dr Reul is no longer active, so on behalf of the ICGA I sent him an email
via someone who is known to be a friend of his and who indicated that he would
pass my email on to Dr Reul. This intermediary did not wish to divulge Dr Reul’s
current email address to the ICGA, which is of course perfectly acceptable behaviour.

Dr Reul did not respond to my email, hence this “open” announcement,
which the ICGA is also asking Dr Reul’s friend to forward to him.

The purpose of this email and announcement is to advise Dr Reul that the ICGA
is planning to conduct an investigation into LOOP in order to examine the allegation
about the use of code derived from FRUIT, and to invite Dr Reul, once again,
to contact the ICGA with his comments on the matter. If we do receive any communication
from Dr Reul the ICGA will of course verify that the person communicating with
us is indeed Dr Fritz Reul, the author of LOOP, before we enter into any discussion
with him.

If Dr Reul does make contact with the ICGA he will be given every opportunity
to defend himself against the allegations, including an invitation for him to
comment on any evidence that the ICGA might consider during the investigation
process.

If, by March 31st 2012, Dr Reul does not make contact with the ICGA in order
to co-operate over this matter, the ICGA will commence its investigation “in
absentia”.

Question: Tell us about the Loop program that was developed
under the supervision of the ICGA and earned its author, Fritz Reul, a PhD
from Prof. Jaap van den Herik, chief tournament director of the ICGA and editor
of its journal. There were suspicions that Loop contained plagiarised code
to a much greater extent than that of which Vasik Rajlich has been accused.

Answer: Although Reul's thesis was supervised by Professor
van den Herik the Loop program was not developed under the supervision of the
ICGA. We have received a formal complaint from Fabien Letouzey about Loop and
will be making a statement shortly to indicate how we are going to deal with
it.

Søren Riis, London

My article “A gross miscarriage of justice in Computer Chess” [links
below] was obviously a defense of Rajlich so in that sense David Levy is correct
and my article can be said to show bias. However, while it’s acceptable
that the defense and prosecution are biased, I find it wholly unacceptable if
the people in charge of an investigation are. And please note by Levy’s
own admission – the people in charge of the ICGA investigation already
prejudged that Rajlich was guilty before the investigation started.

Levy begins the interview with an astonishing admission and shift in argument:
Rajlich did not copy (or translate) code verbatim from Fruit, instead he undertook
“non-literal copying”. But what exactly is non-literal copying?
Maybe Levy's notion of non-literal copying is supposed to be about using underlying
structures from Fruit? But the most important underlying structure, the data
structure, couldn't be more different. Levy's notion of "non-literal copying"
is so vague and subject to mischievous interpretation as to have no real meaning.

A reasonable use of the term "non-literal copying" would be an activity
which is covered and forbidden by copyright law. In that case if Rajlich had
engaged in "non-literal copying" he would be in breach of copyright
law and Rybka would be a “derivative work” of Fruit. This is clearly
not the case, as was argued in my article and also subsequently shown by an
independent computer programming expert, Andrew Dalke, who looked
at the case. Note also that the very fact that this input from Dalke exists
at all bears witness to the fact that Levy is wrong when he says that the ICGA
investigation had to be carried out by computer chess specialists and computer
chess specialists alone. Per Levy's fallacious construct investigators need
to be experts in “Pac-Man programming” in order to determine whether
a “Pac-Man” program is original or breaching copyright laws.

Of course there is a good reason to have at least some "chess programmers"
involved so they for example can assist with the "filtration" stages.
As Andrew Dalke writes:

They [ICGA] claim to use the abstraction-filtration-comparison test to determine
substantial similarity, but without the appropriate filtration. At each of
the structural levels they fail to show that the discovery methods are not
producing false positives, and they fail to demonstrate that the similarity
level is greater than would be expected from a non-infringing chess program
implementing the idea at the same structural level.

Chess programmers would be useful in pointing at which elements to use and
which to filter in the ICGA (Watkins) comparison. However, it seems that the
"chess programmers" were not involved in any filtering process, if
such a thing even existed – they talk much about abstraction and comparison
in their reports, but never filtration!

The correct way to state things is that Rybka implements ideas, concepts and
algorithms that Rajlich learned from Fruit and other sources which gave Rajlich
the tools to take chess programming to a new level of excellence. If Levy wants
to call this "non-literal copying" it raises a host of thorny questions
with answers that are inevitably highly subjective. What Rajlich took from Fruit
complied with ICGA Rule 2 as stated, as well as satisfying copyright and license
laws. Rybka was heavily inspired by Fruit but is not a derivative work of Fruit.
In addition, Fruit itself took many ideas from other sources and also stands
on the shoulders of previous giants of the genre. Robert Hyatt’s program
Crafty is greatly indebted to Letouzey, Heinz, Slate/Atkin, Keenan, Slate/Sherzer
and Shannon to name but a few. This is how computer chess programs are developed.

When the ICGA received the complaint letter from chess programmers, a wise
response that would have shown responsible leadership could have been:

"The ICGA’s view is that it is entirely acceptable to use ideas,
algorithms and high level concepts from other programs. If it can be shown
in a court of law that a program violates another's copyright or license agreement
we will take appropriate action against the violator. In the absence of a
court decision we would consider taking action if compelling evidence was
submitted to the ICGA that a program contained copied (literal or translated)
code. We have to maintain neutrality so in general we prefer to single out
programs for investigation by random checks rather than selecting the ones
suggested by competitors.

In the actual case of Rybka the alleged offense took place more than five
years ago and in our judgment there are other programs from more recent ICGA
tournaments we more urgently would need to examine. In the absence of a court
decision or direct evidence of blatant code copying (or code translation)
we will not initiate a time consuming and extensive investigation of Rybka."

Such a response would have been fair and would have saved computer chess (as
well as the ICGA) from a lot of trouble. There is however nothing wrong with
the ICGA conducting an investigation. However, in addition to technical expertise,
they should also have applied non-technical judgement and thought about a fair,
proportionate and reasonable way to proceed. Bob Hyatt and other aggressive
pre-judgers should have been kept away from the investigation. A massive failure
of the ICGA investigation was the structure of the process; it is almost inconceivable
that the decision was left purely to technical experts who unfortunately were
blind to the veracity of the evidence presented as well as to the implications
of what they were doing.

My ChessBase article sparked off debates also among software specialists outside
the small "club" of chess programmers. For anyone who followed these
debates it seems virtually certain that a thorough investigation conducted by
neutral software specialists would have found the great chess programmer and
world champion innocent and cleared his name.

Søren
Riis is a Computer Scientist at Queen Mary University of London. He
has a PhD in Maths from the University of Oxford. He used to play competitive
chess (Elo 2300). In his latest email Søren wrote: "Just for your
information: I withdrew as Rybka forum moderator almost immediately after the
ChessBase article, as there were far to much mud slinging, and moderation became
almost impossible and time consuming. So I have no formal links with Rybka which
allows me to speak without any hidden strings attached.

Marcel van Kervinck, Netherlands

I would like to draw your attention to two points. First: in part one of his
recent interview with ChessBase David Levy states the following: "Your
question implies that Rajlich might only have copied a small and insignificant
amount of Fruit, while the conclusion of the ICGA investigation was that a lot
of code was copied." This does not represent my opinion as an active
and voting panel member. Not now and not at the time of the investigation.

Code (=literal elements) was proven to be copied in a Rybka version that didn't
compete in ICGA tournaments. But that didn't violate rule 2 because it didn't
play in ICGA tournaments.

Formulas (=non-literal elements) was proven to be copied in Rybka 2.3.2a, which
did compete in an ICGA tournament. Proven there was that more than just "ideas"
were taken, but many Fruit-specific design choices that are rather arbitrary
by themselves and unnecessary. But not proven was code copying in this version.

As such VR still violated the letter of the first sentence of rule 2. The rule's
first sentence doesn't talk about "code", but about "program"
and "work". An important distinction to make in representing what
happened. (The logic of the later sentences of rule 2 makes it clear that "code"
must not be taken as a synonym for "program" or "work",
as is sometimes done in other contexts)

I therefore request you to rectify the above statement at ChessBase. You don't
need it for your case and in your second part of the interview you are much
more precise in your wording: there you say that Vasik Rajlich "used code
derived from Fruit". I can accept that phrasing if it is intended to mean
"Rajlich competed with code that he wrote, but which was derived from Fruit's
design". And honestly, if that is what it means, that is how it should
be phrased because it is too easy to misread otherwise. The most likely reason
for the evaluation overlap in my opinion is that VR designed Rybka's evaluation
first-most as an as faithful as possible replica of Fruit's without copying
any lines of code in that process. From that point on, he worked to improve
this evaluation.

But still many traces of Fruit's formulas are clearly visible in version Rybka
2.3.2a.

Second, I would also like to inform you that with the knowledge I have today,
I would have voted differently in the investigation process. I will explain
why: I'm not sure anymore that information provided for making a conclusion
about the breaking of the 'spirit' of rule 2 was sufficient. In particular,
the entry forms of prior entrants were not considered and should have been.
I feel the investigators were insufficiently instructed about how prior entrants
have declared their origins.
My specific interest is in the application form of the original entry of the
Deep Thought team.

It was well-known at the time that DT was based on the design of Belle, and
that Ken Thompson had given permission to the DT team to use that design as
a template. It is not known wether this was written on the entry form. Why does
this matter, you would say, because Fabien Letouzey should have given permission
anyway. I will explain:

It was at the time well-known, by his own statements on his website, which
was referenced on his entry form BTW, that Rajlich had studied Fruit extensively
and had taken many things. And in my current opinion, Vas Rajlich did have Fabien
Letouzey's permission to use Fruit's formulas in a WCCCh program.

The GPL license does allow that, unlike your statement in the ChessBase interview.
The GPL can protect reproduction only. Entering a derived work in a tournament
is not reproduction by the EU's copyright directive for software, which was
applicable in Amsterdam. The fact that commercializing Rybka 2.3.2a might break
the GPL is a civil matter between FL/FSF and Vasik Rajlich, and the ICGA should
be no party in that.

I regret I didn't persist more at the time the comparison of Rybka's entry
form with that of DT's. Because my vote should have been affected as follows:

If DT's team did declare, on the entry form, that Belle's design was used,
I would have voted Vas Rajlich guilty.

If DT's didn't declare such on the form, I would have voted "not guilty,
because there is no difference between DT's entry and VR's. Rule 2 should
be applied the same."

If DT's entry form was not to be found anymore, I would have voted "not
guilty, because the information was insufficient to make an informed decision."

Previous articles on the ICGA/Rybka scandal

ICGA/Rybka controversy: An interview with David
Levy (2) 10.02.2012 – On Monday we published part
one of a lengthy interview we had conducted, via sequential email
exchanges, with the President of the International Computer Games Association
David Levy. The ICGA had found star programmer Vasik Rajlich guilty
of "plagiarism" in his early program versions and banned him for life.
Here now is part
two of the interview.

ICGA/Rybka controversy: An interview with David Levy
(1) 06.02.2012 – He is a star chess programmer
with an unbroken record of supremacy in computer chess during the past
five years. In June 2011 the International Computer Games Association
found Vasik Rajlich guilty of "plagiarism" in early program versions
and banned him for life. We published a vigorous defence of Rajlich
and a rebuttal by ICGA President David Levy, who promised us an indepth
interview.

Feedback on the ICGA/Rybka disqualification scandal13.01.2012 – It's a long read, but many of
the letters we received in reaction to the defence of the Rybka program
by Dr Søren Riis are quite passionate and well thought out in their content.
We start with the summary of a long rebuttal of the Riis paper that was
sent to us by the ICGA and circulated on the Internet – with links to
the full version and ancillary documents. Take
a deep breath.

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part
four)05.01.2012 – As proof that Vas Rajlich had
copied program code the ICGA presented pages and pages of Fruit and Rybka
code side by side. But, according to Dr Søren Riis, what was labeled as
Rybka code was actually fabricated to look like Fruit. He criticizes the
ICGA's process failures and ruminates on the reasons behind the unprecedented
vendetta launched against the star
chess programmer.

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part
three) 04.01.2012 – A core accusation against Vas
Rajlich is that Rybka and Fruit have very similar positional evaluations,
and the use of floating point numbers in Rybka’s time management code
had to be copied from Fruit. Søren Riis enumerates the ten substantive
evaluation differences and shows how the second accusation boils down
to a single misplaced keystroke with zero
impact on Rybka's play.

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part
two)03.01.2012 – In this part Dr Søren Riis of
Queen Mary University in London shows how most programs (legally) profited
from Fruit, and subsequently much more so from the (illegally) reverse
engineered Rybka. Yet it is Vasik Rajlich who was investigated, found
guilty of plagiarism, banned for life, stripped of his titles, and vilified
in the international press – for a five-year-old alleged tournament rule
violation. Ironic.

A Gross Miscarriage of Justice in Computer Chess (part
one)02.01.2012 – "Biggest Sporting Scandal since
Ben Johnson" and "Czech Mate, Mr. Cheat" – these were headlines in newspapers
around the world six months ago. The International Computer Games Association
had disqualified star programmer Vasik Rajlich for plagiarism, retroactively
stripped him of all titles, and banned him for life. Søren Riis, a computer
scientist from London, has investigated
the scandal.

See also

2/10/2012 – On Monday we published part
one of a lengthy interview we had conducted, via sequential email exchanges,
with the President of the International Computer Games Association David Levy.
The ICGA had found star programmer Vasik Rajlich guilty of "plagiarism"
in his early program versions and banned him for life. Here now is part two of the interview.Discuss

1/13/2012 – It's a long read, but many of the letters we received in reaction to the defence of the Rybka program by Dr Søren Riis are quite passionate and well thought out in their content. We start with the summary of a long rebuttal of the Riis paper that was sent to us by the ICGA and circulated on the Internet – with links to the full version and ancillary documents. Take a deep breath.Discuss

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